Software help archive

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Improtant bugs with frame COMM - Serato destroys data!

Product
Scratch Live
Version
-
Hardware
Ortofon | Serato S-120
Computer
-
OS
Platform
-
pueblofunky 9:31 PM - 11 March, 2009
in 1.8.3 (also 1.8.2), the COMM frame won't be displayed correctly.

Which ID3 version does Serato 1.8.3 support in WAV files?

The first content descriptor will be displayed (partially wrong) or the first value of the content descriptor will be displayed (partially wrong).

Serato isn't able to handle other content descriptors. To display the "real" comment, the empty content descriptor should be displayed - which doesn't happen.

--

I'm tagging the files with Tag & Rename (3.5) which supports ID3 v2.3.0. for WAV files. I'm writing a "Catalog Number" which is saved in the COMM frame.

Extracted from a WAV file:

03d71360h: 00 00 01 FF FE 31 00 31 00 33 00 2E 00 37 00 43 ; ...ÿþ1.1.3...7.C
03d71370h: 4F 4D 4D 00 00 00 30 00 00 01 65 6E 67 FF FE 43 ; OMM...0...engÿþC
03d71380h: 00 61 00 74 00 61 00 6C 00 6F 00 67 00 20 00 4E ; .a.t.a.l.o.g. .N
03d71390h: 00 75 00 6D 00 62 00 65 00 72 00 00 00 FF FE 41 ; .u.m.b.e.r...ÿþA
03d713a0h: 00 39 00 31 00 30 00 37 00 00 ; .9.1.0.7..

At 03d7136fh the COMM starts, next 4 bytes the length of 30 (48 bytes), then the flags 00 00.

As described on www.id3.org (chapters 3.3 and 4.11) the COMM is a "Frames that allow different types of text" ...

and the following "01" is for Unicode, followed by the ISO language code "eng", "FF FE" as BOM Header for Unicode and the text starts with "Catalog Number" but

Serato only shows the text "atalog Number" (without the beginning "C" a bug). Also the value itself ("A9107") is missing. There are mysterious bugs.

I recommend to download & install Tag & Rename 3.5 and fill in Comments, Catalog Numbers, Ratings (also not supported by Serato) and then check the values in Serato.

Also after updating the Comment in Serato - all other content descriptors will be deleted (Ratings, Catalog number),

=> I CAN NOT USE Tag & Rename with the features - must be sure that all my files are protected (Read only or protect lib) when using Serato - otherwise all info I've added manually will be destroyed by Serato.

:-(
Serato, Moderator
Andy W 1:04 AM - 12 March, 2009
Hi pueblofunky, I can confirm the behavior you're seeing, and I can see why it's doing it - there's a problem with the way the Unicode comment descriptor is handled. Scratch Live doesn't normally display the comment descriptor at all, so what you should correctly see in this case is "A9107".

I can't make a solid promise on when this will be fixed but we'll try to get this done in time for the next release...
pueblofunky 4:05 PM - 12 March, 2009
Hi,

I think "A9107" (the value of the comment descriptor) shouldn't be displayed. Only a "real" comment.

I can see that Tag & Rename writes the content of the column "Comment" as "FF FE 00 00 FF FE andthevalue" =>

which means that "FF FE 00 00" is an empty comment descriptor and then starts the value (with Unicode) and thats the value of a "normal" comment.

I didn't find anything about the logic on the ID3 website. Maybe someone could check what mp3tag.de is doing in this case - (I currently don't use it because it doesn't support wav files).

Best regards,
Robert